As direct peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians began this week, there was one area of agreement among the key parties involved: that a “two-state solution” must be at the heart of a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Israel’s prime minister recently embraced the idea, as has the Palestinian leadership, officially at least, since 1982. It has overwhelming support among “the Quartet” — the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union.

As a strong supporter of Israel and its right to exist in peace and security as a Jewish state, I have sometimes been criticized for my skepticism about a two-state solution. But invoking the two-state mantra is not a panacea for what ails the Middle East. Two-state advocates differ wildly about what form each state would take. More fundamentally, there is voluminous evidence that many Palestinians, including those involved with groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, desire not two states but the destruction of Israel.

The creation of, as President Obama envisions, “two states, living side by side in peace and security” is an appealing goal. But with whom would the Obama administration negotiate to achieve it? In the current talks, the Palestinian people will be represented by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But do Abbas and his Fatah party truly speak for a majority of Muslims? Hamas is much stronger and more competent than Fatah and rules Gaza and its 1.5 million Palestinians with apparent popular support. It also holds a majority in the Palestinian parliament.

As Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said last month, “The world will deal with us not because it wants to deal with us but because it has to deal with us. Hamas … has emerged as an important player in the region. It’s clear it cannot be bypassed.”

But Hamas is a terrorist organization that’s funded by Iran to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Obama’s vision cannot be realized when one side is led by a terrorist group whose governing charter calls for the destruction of the other side.

Even high-ranking Fatah officials hold beliefs that would make negotiations futile. In 2009, Muhammad Dahlan, leader of Fatah in Gaza, said, “For the 1,000th time, I want to reaffirm that we are not asking Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Rather, we are asking Hamas not to do so, because Fatah never recognized Israel’s right to exist.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently endorsed a two-state framework that includes a demilitarized Palestinian state. Disarmament is a reasonable condition given what happened the last time Israel withdrew from disputed territory. In 2005, Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza, uprooting thousands of Jewish families and deeply dividing the country.

At the time, Netanyahu, then finance minister, predicted that Gaza would be transformed into “a huge base for terror.” And that’s exactly what happened after Hamas took over in Gaza in 2007 and began launching attacks on Israel’s citizens that continue today. Thousands of rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel, causing dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries.

In August, a Kassam rocket launched from Gaza smashed into a center for children with special needs in Negev, Israel. Had the attack not occurred on a Saturday night, dozens of children and teachers would have been killed. Another Hamas attack near Hebron killed four Israelis on the eve of the latest peace talks.

Dozens of new jihadist groups have sprung up in what increasingly looks like Hamastan.

But the Palestinians have made it clear they will not accept demilitarization. In June 2009, after Netanyahu’s initial endorsement of a two-state solution, Mashaal said “The Palestinian people reject the Israeli position on a demilitarized state.”

What’s more, there are serious doubts that the Palestinians would follow through on an agreement to disarm. Professor Louis Rene Beres has noted that if, under what international law calls a “fundamental change of circumstances,” the Palestinian state “declared itself vulnerable to previously unforeseen dangers — perhaps even from the forces of other Arab armies — it could lawfully end its sworn commitment to remain demilitarized.”

Another question has to do with the character of a future Palestinian state. Specifically, would Jews be allowed to live there? Palestinians have long insisted that Israeli homes in Judea and Samaria be dismantled, and Palestinian leaders are hostile to accepting a Jewish minority as equal citizens.

Recently, in explaining why peace talks with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert failed, Abbas said, “I’m willing to agree to a third party that would supervise the agreement, such as NATO forces, but I would not agree to having Jews among the NATO forces or that there will live among us even a single Israeli on Palestinian land.”

While more than 1 million Muslim Arabs live in Israel with full rights as citizens, Arabs face the death sentence for selling property to Jews in the Palestinian Authority. And while Israeli textbooks generally promote the idea of co-existence, Palestinian textbooks educate for hate. Watchdog groups have highlighted how children’s textbooks in the Palestinian territories reject Israel’s right to exist, incite intolerance and hatred and romanticize suicide bombings against Israel.

Apart from disagreements over what form a two-state solution would take, there is the fundamental question of whether the Palestinians ultimately want to co-exist with a Jewish state. There are strong indications that the Palestinians envision a two-state solution only as a first step toward their final destination: one state ruled by an Arab Muslim majority.

Palestinian official Sufian Abu Zaida recently abandoned a two-state position. After Netanyahu’s two-state endorsement last summer, Abu Zaida mocked him, saying, “Do you think you are doing us a favor when you agree to two states? No favor at all. From my side, from the Palestinians’ side — let there be one state, not two.”

These and other statements have created skepticism among American Jews about the Palestinians’ intentions. A 2007 survey found that 82 percent of American Jews believed that “the goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel.”

Other polls show that the two-state scenario is rejected by the vast majority of Arab Muslims, especially youth. As Condoleezza Rice said in 2008, “Increasingly, the Palestinians who talk about a two-state solution are my age.”

But a “one-state solution” would be no solution at all. As Israeli president Shimon Peres wrote in 2009, one state “would undermine Israel’s legitimacy and internationally recognized right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state.” Agreeing to the Palestinians' demand for a “right of return” for millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants would mean 5 million Palestinian refugees flooding Israel, overwhelming Israel’s 5 million Jews and eroding the idea of Israel as a Jewish state.

There are other major obstacles, of course, including the status of Jerusalem, Hezbollah’s provocations and the existential threat of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

I cannot accept a two-state solution until I know what those states would look like and where they would be located — and until I’m sure that the ultimate result would not be the destruction of Israel as an independent Jewish state. The creation of two states may well be part of the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But we do all parties involved a disservice by pretending that it is a synonym for peace.

Former presidential candidate Gary Bauer is president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families.